![]() ![]() The other… well, maybe this is me, but I don’t understand how someone can have a true love that he wants to marry and spend the rest of his life with, but also need to have sex with a handful of various men around the court as well. ![]() One is pretty minor, namely that the surprise about the motive won’t come as a surprise to people who have read a few mystery novels. Add in Will’s determination to be taken seriously by his true love’s father while needing to play the fool when anyone is watching, and you’ve a story with plenty of moving parts. The relationship between Henry and Will seems very convincing and the machinations of various bodies around the court work well to build up the suspicion that danger lurks around every corner. The book seems well-researched and the both the descriptions and mechanics of court life run true. Will is an interesting character, for the most part – see the caveat below – and the idea of a character being overlooked by most people while searching for the truth isn’t exactly new, using the role of the fool in that role works well. So having said that, seeing this was the start of a series, I thought I’d get in on the ground floor. ![]() I was rather intrigued when I saw this one pop up on NetGalley, as I’ve read one book by Jeri Westerson, and while I enjoyed it, I felt that, having crashed into the middle of a long-running series, I was missing out on the backstory of the main character. Not just the fact that someone from a foreign power has been killed, but also that Will spent the previous night in bed with the man. When Will finds one of them dead in the Palace gardens, he knows that trouble has arrived. The Spanish court are less keen on Henry abandoning Catherine, and an group of Spanish nobles are also present at Greenwich. And these are difficult times for Henry, as he is tiring of his wife, Catherine of Aragon, and a young woman called Anne has caught his eye. Will Somers is the king’s jester – and the king’s source of gossip and advice, possibly the only person in the court to be honest with the temperamental monarch. 1529, Greenwich Palace, London, at the court of King Henry VIII. ![]()
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